Head-To-Head: Lenovo Yoga 900S Vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 4

A Lighter Approach to Business Travel

The Lenovo Yoga 900S is a laptop the business traveler should appreciate. Touted for being ultra-light and thin -- the "world's thinnest convertible laptop," actually, according to Lenovo -- the Yoga 900S debuted in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. The 2-in-a laptop serves as a new spin on the Yoga 900 focused on easier mobility. But the device also begs for a comparison to another business-friendly, on-the-go Windows 10 device -- the popular Surface Pro 4.

Which is a better fit for you? What follows is our comparison on the specs and prices of the two devices.

Also, be sure to check out more of the CRN Test Center's side-by-side comparisons of the latest smartphones, tablets, and 2-in-1s.

Thickness And Weight

Lenovo's Yoga 900S aims to stand apart on its portability. Partly that's achieved by the 2-in-1 laptop's thickness, which is just 12.8 mm (0.5 inches). That's a bit thinner than Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 combined with the Type Cover, which together total 13.1 mm (0.52 inches). The Yoga 900S is also about 7 percent lighter than the Surface Pro 4 (with i5 or i7 chips) -- at 2.2 pounds vs. 2.37 pounds.

Processor

The processor in the Yoga 900S is one of the key enablers behind making it so thin and light. The laptop uses Intel's sixth-generation Core M processors -- the m5 or m7, depending on the configuration. The chips are certainly powerful enough for effective multitasking but not as powerful as the Intel sixth-generation Core i5 or i7 processors, which are available in the higher-end versions of the Surface Pro 4 (the lower-end model uses an Intel Core m3 processor).

The reason the Core M processors are favored for thin and lightweight devices such as the Yoga 900S: They don't require a fan for cooling, as do the Core i5 and i7 chips.

Battery Life

Lenovo hopes its Yoga 900S will appeal to business travelers in the battery category, too. The laptop promises 10.5 hours of video playback so that, if you happened to want to fly from Vegas to London, you'd need only a single charge to last the flight. The promised battery life tops that of the Surface Pro 4, which Microsoft says will give you up to nine hours of video playback.

Memory And Storage

Both devices are configurable on storage and memory, though there are more options for the Surface Pro 4. The Yoga 900S has a higher-end version that offers 8 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage, with a lower-end version offering 4 GB of memory with storage equaling 128 GB.

With Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, getting a larger amount of memory is an option, with a 16-GB version available. The device can also be configured with 4 GB or 8 GB worth of memory. Storage-wise, the Surface Pro 4 has two standard configurations -- 128 GB or 256 GB -- though for a premium, you can customize the device to have 512 GB or 1 TB worth of storage.

Display

Despite being lighter and thinner than Surface Pro 4, the Yoga 900S is a bit larger in the display category at 12.5 inches, vs. 12.3 inches. The Surface Pro 4 is superior on pixels, however, with 2,736-by-1,824 resolution supported by its PixelSense display. The Yoga 900S comes with a 2,560-by-1440 IPS display.

Ports

Lenovo's Yoga 900S offers one USB 3.0 (Type A), one USB 3.0 with Video-out (Type-C) and one DC-in with USB 2.0 function. With the Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 come one full-size USB 3.0, a microSD Card reader, a mini DisplayPort, the Surface Connect port (for power and docking) and the keyboard port.

Add-Ons

The Surface Pro 4 comes with the Surface Pen for note taking and drawing, while the Yoga 900S has an optional pen of its own. The Yoga 900S also has an optional mouse for use just when traveling -- the $70 Yoga Mouse -- with features including easier navigation and control over media playback.

Price

Lenovo's Yoga 900S has two models -- a $1,099 version and a $1,299 version. Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, on the other hand, has a higher number of possible configurations and a bigger range of prices as a result. At the low end, you can get a Surface Pro 4 for $899 -- cheaper than any of the Yoga 900S models, but with a less-powerful processor. At the highest end, the Surface Pro 4 will run $1,799. You'll also need to drop $130 if you want the attachable keyboard -- whereas the Yoga 900S already contains a keyboard, of course. On the other hand, you'll need to add $40 to the price of the Yoga 900S if you want a pen, while one comes included with the Surface Pro 4.

Excluding any of the additional items, here are how the prices break down for the standard configurations of the Lenovo Yoga 900S and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (from low to high):

Custom versions of the highest-end Surface Pro 4 are also available with 512 GB of storage ($2,199) or 1 TB of storage ($2,699).